The new standards at for-profit schools come from a task force established several months ago by a coalition of investors and for-profit executives, in response to revelations about for-profit schools employing highly aggressive tactics to recruit students who either never graduated or obtained degrees that failed to land jobs, resulting in extremely high levels of default.

The disproportionate role of for-profit schools in student-loan default rates was reflected in the Department of Education's announcement Monday, which named five schools across the U.S. that face possible sanctions because of extremely high default rates.